[London Indian Restaurants]

How about The Punjab in Neal Street in Covent Garden? It's one of the oldest Indian restaurants in the UK, but the menu does have some interesting touches, eg chicken or lamb with fresh fenugreek or with pomegranate (sp?) or "pickled", and the best pumpkin puri I've ever tasted. Charming staff, too.

It was started by the current owner's grandfather and I remember the old boy sitting in a corner of the restaurant keeping an eye on things every evening until a few years ago, when he went to India for a holiday and died. It turned out that he was 101 years old, so he was a great advertisment for the preservative powers of curry.

[Top Butchers In London]

Agree about Ginger Pig at Borough. However, Wild Beef at Borough is also quite excellent, as is Portwine in Earlham Street, Covent Garden.

[Not so neat]

Are you able to fill in any details of why the restaurants in Cannes and London closed?

i wasn't involved with Neat London for the six months before it closed, so my information is a bit second-hand, but I think that a restaurant with its overheads and charging the prices it did was bound to have a difficult time after 9/11. It hadn't been going long enough before September 2001 to have built up a solid customer base to support it through the weeks when people were avoiding central London restaurants, and although trade picked up after six weeks the damage was done.

Cannes closed primarily because July and August 2002 were very poor trading months in Cannes and we just couldn't trade through to the traditionally much better months of September and October.

More generally, the best response for a high-end restaurant to an economic downturn is perhaps to simplify the offering and reduce the prices, and Richard Neat did try this in Cannes (although not in London), but maybe not soon enough. It's very hard to simplify his food and not compromise the USP of his technical genius.

No doubt others will have different explanations.

[Not so neat]

Only on sorting out the debris...

[Not so neat]

I have to declare an interest as Richard Neat's colleague in setting up Neat in Cannes.

We did not lose our Michelin star in Cannes; we had a star in the 2002 Guide (for the third year running); we closed in September 2002, well before the 2003 Guide came out, which is why we do not feature in the current Guide.

[Borough Hall Farmers Market]

Paul who makes the prepped stuff is a reputable pig-botherer.

Have had good jambon persille. the faggots are cooked there and you can buy them in a foil thing with a fork for local consumption.

Very solid. better probably on a plate of mash.

Think of them as two cricket balls of offal porky goodness.

Paul at Ginger Pig's pates, smokey bacon meatballs and his baked beans with bacon are all A1, too.